Mandela, MLK & Obama

I think we can all agree that when major world leaders die, we all die a little bit ourselves. In my case, I generally come down with a terminal case of boredom because the media bombards us with tributes from people who labor under the delusion that a little bit of glory rubs off on them if they utter the requisite number of laudatory clichés.

In Mandela’s case, he was apparently as good and bad as any figure of our time. Nobody can deny that he was exactly what his nation needed – a leader who not only didn’t seek revenge on those who had kept him in prison for 27 years, but who had handed over the presidency after a few short years when every other African leader hangs on for as long as he can, generally murdering countless thousands in order to do so.

On the other hand, when it came to matters outside the borders of South Africa, he was a left wing, anti-American, anti-Semitic, creep who buddied up to the loathsome likes of Gaddafi, Castro, the Russians, Yasser Arafat, and the Palestinians, sounding exactly like the Ayatollah when it came to Israel.

At his send-off held in South Africa’s major soccer stadium, we and the rest of the world got to see Obama meet and greet Raul Castro, behaving as if he had just run into a long-lost chum. Once again, I got to see him bend to shake Castro’s hand, just as he had with all those world leaders in 2009. The fact is he’s 6’1, tall but not gigantic; I have a great many friends who are that tall or taller, and even though I’m only 5’7 when I stand on my tiptoes, none of my pals has to bend over to shake hands. Whether Obama thinks the slouch emphasizes his height or, God forbid, hopes to fool people into thinking he’s humble, I don’t know. But it’s a very annoying affectation and I wish he’d cut it out.

Although I believe that Mandela’s virtues outweigh his sins, I’m not sure I feel the same way about Martin Luther King. The major difference between these two communists is that Mandela was a politician; he was in a position to turn his moral convictions into reality. King, on the other hand, was simply a reverend, a moral authority, if you will, but as a serial adulterer, I have to question how much actual authority he had or deserved. What’s more, unlike Mandela, who did so much to rid his nation of apartheid, the relations between blacks and whites in America not only haven’t improved since the late 60s, they have become far worse, although Obama and those other reverends, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, have to take much of the blame for that.

Although he generally gets to slide because he was only a writer and not a dictator, Karl Marx deserves his place on any list of major villains because it was his writing that made it possible for the very worst despots – Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Chavez – to put a good face on pure evil. All they had to do was give away some freebies to the mob in the name of fairness and equality, and before the mob knew what was happening, they were under someone’s boot. And because the mob, whether here or in Russia or Cambodia, is as collectively stupid as a sack of rocks, they will swallow bilge from anyone who promises to take away goodies from others and give it to them.

In case you don’t know a mob when you see it, if it chants slogans, it’s a mob. Mobs always chant, generally while marching in a circle with their right fists thrust in the air, while parroting some jackass screaming inanities into a megaphone.

Washington, D.C., has a population of 601,000 people, 305,000 of whom are blacks. Another stat worth noting is that 44% of all black pregnancies in our nation’s capital end in abortions. I only included this item to let people know that there is one silver lining when it comes to the huge number of abortions taking place in America. It’s a case of Democrats killing off future Democrats, and not being able to blame it on those racist Republicans.

According to political pundit George Will, people who oppose the treaty that Obama and Kerry are trying to make with Iran are nostalgic for the 1930s. By that, I take him to mean that things were terrible back in the days when the Soviet Union was isolated and only the New York Times and Pravda had good things to say about the Bolsheviks, and when Stalin’s agents hadn’t yet had a chance to infiltrate our State Department. For my own part, I’m nostalgic for the 1990s when George Will wrote about baseball, a topic about which he seemed to know a little something.

Finally, someone should explain the meaning of “hypocrisy” to Ed Henry, Fox’s man at the White House. While reporting that Harry Reid had exempted his staff from ObamaCare, he went on to say that there were some Republicans who were being equally hypocritical because he’d heard that a few GOP senators were considering exempting their own staffs. If Mr. Henry sees no difference between the guy who had done the heavy lifting to get the toxic bill passed, and those on the other side of the aisle who voted against it and have been trying to kill it for the past four years, it may be time for Fox to get him away from Jay Carney’s influence before his brain also turns into mulch.

Author Bio:

Burt Prelutsky, a very nice person once you get to know him, has been a humor columnist for the L.A. Times and a movie critic for Los Angeles magazine. As a freelancer, he has written for the New York Times, Washington Times, TV Guide, Modern Maturity, Emmy, Holiday, American Film, and Sports Illustrated.
For television, he has written for Dragnet, McMillan & Wife, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda, Bob Newhart, Family Ties, Dr. Quinn and Diagnosis Murder. In addition, he has written a batch of terrific TV movies. View Burt’s IMDB profile.
Talk about being well-rounded, he plays tennis and poker... and rarely cheats at either.
He lives in the San Fernando Valley, where he takes his marching orders from a wife named Yvonne and a dog named Angel.Author website: http://www.burtprelutsky.com/

I get so tired also of hearing ‘we here in Washington’ like Tom Coburn is always stating when it is clearly the progressive democrats screwing America. And yeah, every anti-democrat idea on Fox is automatically assumed to also be the view of the Republican party. And I wish they (FOX) would stop pushing Christy, like they pushed Romney. They need to keep their nose out and let the people decide this time!!!!!!! Also, excellent article, as usual.

SAWB69

Every year I hear and read about Coburn and his book of government waste, but I never hear of him doing anything about it! Can’t he and/or some of his cronies promote a bill to cut out some of this crap instead of just disgusting us with it every year?

RickonhisHarleyJohnson

Great one, Burt. On Fox News, they are killing me with their ‘fair and balanced’. Sometimes, it is just about the dumbo politician in the story and not about his partner in crime “across the aisle”.